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Radical Faeries

I’m not sure if the stand of poison oak surrounding my campsite these last three days has gotten onto my skin. I’m covered in dirt, sweat (my own and other’s), a few bruises, at least one small cut from rocks along a stream, and it will take me several weeks to shed all the plant matter which clung to what little clothing I wore during Beltaine week.

I’ve spent most of this week at a Radical Faerie sanctuary in southern Oregon, surrounded by queer Pagans of every gender imaginable, watching them dance, cry, laugh, eat, urinate, and unabashedly copulate amongst the grasses and trees of the land which hosts an indescribably serene and beautiful sanctuary from the world from which those of us gathered had come and must return.

The Radical Faeries are known for many things, but the one thread of their existence which is often most discussed is their embrace of queer sexuality. A sex-positive community of displaced and alienated left-leaning queers, informed by, composed and embracing of spiritualities which align well with other Pagan traditions, but without a specific central tradition, the Radical Faeries were the first pagans whom I encountered, and the first people with whom I truly felt a sense of home.

It is interesting, then, to consider their existence and what they represent through the current lens of tensions over sexual ethics and scandals in several Pagan traditions. It’s not my goal to address or critique these specific scandals, nor the accompanying reactions; rather, it seems better to address the legacy of sexual liberation within Paganism and to present a broader framework for understanding the position we find ourselves currently in, both internally and historically.

“Neo-Paganism” and the 1960’s

There are multiple ideas regarding Paganism and its particularly modern (and American-specific) iterations. While some hold to the idea that what we call Paganism now is particularly new and disconnected to the various Paganisms which existed in history, there seems such a preponderance of potential connections (if not direct continuity) to older traditions scattered about the western, “disenchanted” world that I do not hold to this reading. That being said, the specific iterations of traditions (many actually new or reformulations) which we call Paganism, at least in America, seem to have sprung up during a specific recent historical period—that is, the years we call the 60’s. While not precisely descriptive of the actual time period (several traditions started before the actual decade between 1960 and 1969, while many more started after), it’s a useful short-hand.

When speaking of this time period, however, one cannot ignore what else was also occurring during the time that Pagan-aligned traditions began to flourish and gain currency. If one studies the social unrest and upheaval across much of the western (disenchanted) world in the 1960’s (strikes in England, the political union of leftist students and worker-unions in France, the rise of leftist and campanero movements in South America) and compares it with the radical political and counter-cultural movements in the United States during that same period (student anti-war coalitions, massive protests, black and indigenous rights movements), one becomes hard-pressed not to draw the conclusion–or at least follow a strong thread of suspicion–that some significant international anti-authoritarian movements had arisen, apparently spontaneously, in multiple places at once.

The legacies of these foments and upheavals is certainly mixed and this is hardly adequate space to discuss the successes, failures, and even impact of these movements and their politics; what shouldn’t be ignored though is the concurrence of Pagan spiritualities during this same period, particularly in America, as well as what is a more popular legacy of this time and the one which holds the most collective memory for those of us who were not yet born: sexual liberation.

Free-Love and Radical Politics

“The Barn,” where meals are served at the Sanctuary (Photo by Yavi Luminous)

It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I encountered what seemed to be the buried legacy of those years, and I suspect I am not alone in this. From history books I’d learned of the civil rights movements, of course, and of the protests against Vietnam and feminist bra-burnings, but more than anything, the theme which seemed to be most portrayed in those histories (and much more so through popular media portrayals) was that of sexual liberation and “free-love.” Still when I attempt to conceive of that time within my mind, it stands out more than anything, and I suspect it is not just my own mental failings. Witness most films and marketing campaigns using motifs birthed from that time period and try not to think about sex. Besides sex sells.

Thus, when I first heard tales and read about the existence of the Students for Democratic Society, the Weathermen, the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement, I experienced what best might be described as utter disbelief. What I’d come to understand of that period through the history I’d been taught in school, as well as popular portrayals in film, television and music didn’t begin to match the ferocity and severity of these radical movements which existed at the same time as the sexual-liberatory currents. To the extent that these narratives seemed incongruent, I initially rejected them—had there really been a time in the United States where such a traumatic gap in hegemonic control over people had been so weakened? Had we really been so close to revolt? And what did this have to do with sex?

A legacy of the Sixties can certainly be said to have been sexual liberation; however, this is hardly the only legacy, and as far as it related to the particular traditions of Paganism which gained currency during that same time period, this legacy should be examined. Many of the Pagan traditions which gained currency during this time bear very strong influences of the discourse around sexuality which arose during the sixties, and our conceptions of the sacredness of sex were undoubtedly influenced by those discussions.

To be clear, I’m not asserting these ideas and questions are new, specific to Paganism, or specifically resulting from the 60’s. As a matter of fact, feminist and European critical theory writers have convincingly detailed that the “liberation” that seemed to be within grasp during that time of upheaval was likely a resurgence of early movements and tendencies which had earlier been crushed in the western world in the past several centuries. Such research also offers tantalizing hints of Pagan continuity alongside discussions of these movements, particularly in the intersection of radical outbreaks, sexual liberation, and Pagan spiritualities.

Hegemony and Traumatic Gaps

That is, the repression of sexual desire, activity and expressions seems to correspond with the oppression of indigenous and non-hegemonic spiritualities. This particular process of oppression and repression, which Marxist-Feminist cultural historian Silvia Federici (and others, including Starhawk) have tied to the process of proletarianization (the creation of a populace whose primary identity is one of wage-worker, disconnected from ancestral, cultural, communal and spiritual identities) is remarkably recent in the Western and Disenchanted world (and is still occurring, particularly in Africa, South America, and Asia), each time involves violent demonization of sexual expressions and culturally-forced gender roles.

Hegemony is a political arrangement, but it also functions as a social and cultural force. In essence, it is the totalizing influence of an oppressive political center which becomes internalized by the people who are “governed” by its centrality. Similar to the notion of the superstructure, hegemony functions within each individual as an implicit threat against certain modes of thought and behavior. For instance, a queer Pagan is subject to hegemonic influence in their expressions of desire and spirituality because of the sense of threat or reprisal by society (or what some have labeled the “overculture”), and thus represses internal inclinations and tendencies, often unknowingly. Only certain sorts of identity are, in essence, “allowed,” and these, at least in disenchanted states of existence, tend to be those which make an individual more governable. A queer Pagan (particularly one who might also be trans*) can be a worker or an American with ease and without fear of reprisal and scorn; on the other hand, a queer male (but born female) gods-worshiper is a claimed identity which is an act of rebellion against hegemony.

There are times when hegemony breaks down, though. Such moments (akin to Hakim Bey’s Temporary Autonomous Zone theories) occur for short periods of time and are often geographically isolated. In rare instances, however, traumatic gaps (that is, moments of opening for resistance) in hegemonic rule of society seem to occur in many places at once. These moments of traumatic gaps, times of weakness or crisis within the hegemonic and totalizing power of authority (in our case, Capitalist and “Liberal-Democratic” hegemony), often see strong cultural revolt as the oppression (and its internalized complement, repression) temporarily loses its grip upon the expressions of people within those societies. In such moments, Pagan spiritualities, radical/leftist political movements, and sexual-liberationist movements all seem to push back into that gap at the same time.

As such, we can then approach the mode of Paganism which arose in the 1960’s as a resurgence or reclamation of older forms of spiritual and cultural identity, and note that it occurred alongside radical anti-authoritarian revolt and attempts to reformulate sexual and gender expressions. Was Paganism responsible for this? Unlikely, but it isn’t surprising, then, that sexual liberation became central to many Pagan-aligned movements which began or gained popularity during this time, just as so many of the Pagan traditions have currents of leftist and anti-authoritarian politics woven into their spiritual understandings.

Rather than looking at sexual liberation as a core foundation of Pagan religions, or as an unfortunate intruder into a sympathetic spiritual movement, one can see it as an aspect of the same revolt against hegemonic control over the spirit, social-relations, and bodies of the governed during a time of traumatic opening.

Photo by Yavi Luminous

The Next Assault

This all begs another question, though. If moments of resurgence, of assaults into the breaches of those traumatic gaps often involve anti-Capitalist and sexual-liberationist trends as well as Pagan spiritualities, how are they linked? And what happened to Paganism now, where discussions of sexual ethics and political analysis have become so fraught with anger and indifference? And why has it been so difficult to re-encounter the other currents of the sixties?

I don’t know the answer to this, but I do have a theory. If indeed the sixties were a time of a traumatic gap in hegemonic rule, and if the strength of the varying movements which fought to press into that breach truly threatened the existing Capitalist, disenchanted order, than it should be utterly unsurprising that the gap needed to be filled so that the current order could survive. That it is now difficult for us to connect the legacies of these anti-authoritarian, anti-hegemonic movements together except in simplistic motifs of “free-love” and peace marches shouldn’t surprise us, either.

That is, the traumatic gap was closed. But if history teaches anything at all, these gaps occur again. It’s difficult for me not to see the survival and strength of groups such as the Radical Faeries and other sexually-liberated groups, the sudden resurgence in Pagan (particularly polytheist) spiritualities, and the rise of new anti-authoritarian movements as a marshalling towards another assault against cracks appearing in those walls which keep us from creating our own individual and collective identities outside of hegemonic rule.

Wrestling, then, with the legacies of our last rebellion and critiquing how those legacies have been diluted or even perverted away from liberation (and unfortunately also towards abuse and more oppression) is essential if we’re to learn this time to tear down the entire order.

“In the fall of the 1975, Evans formed a new pagan-inspired spiritual group in San Francisco, the Faery Circle. It combined countercultural consciousness, gay sensibility, and ceremonial playfulness. In 1976 he gave a series of public lectures at 32 Page St., an early San Francisco gay community center, entitled “Faeries”, on his research on the historical origins of the gay counterculture. In 1978 he published this material in his ground-breaking book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. It demonstrated that many of the people accused of “witchcraft” and “heresy” in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were actually persecuted because of their sexuality and adherence to ancient pagan practices.

In 1984 Evans directed a production at the Valencia Rose Cabaret in San Francisco of his own new translation, from the ancient Greek, of Euripides’ play Bakkhai. The hero of Euripides’ play is the Greek god Dionysos, the patron of homosexuality. In 1988, this translation, together with Evans’ commentary on the historical significance of the play, was published by St. Martin’s Press in New York under the name of The God of Ecstasy.

In 1988, Evans began work on a nine-year project on philosophy. Thanks to a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission, it was published in 1997 as Critique of Patriarchal Reason and included artwork by San Francisco artist Frank Pietronigro. The book is a monumental overview of Western philosophy from antiquity to the present. It shows how misogyny and homophobia have influenced the supposedly objective fields of formal logic, higher mathematics, and physical science. Evans’ former doctoral advisor at Columbia University, Paul Oskar Kristeller, called the work “a major contribution to the study of philosophy and its history.”

“Arthur Evans was asserting the role of queer spirituality in his book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, 1978. His book was a strong initiative in the Radical Faerie movement, influencing gay men to examine their relationship between gay spirituality and the old Pagan Nature religions. In his chapter entitled “Magic and Revolution,” Evans writes that it is the role of gay men to look forward to re-establishing our communication with nature and the Great Mother, to feeling the essential link between sex and the forces that hold the universe together…We look forward to regaining our ancient historical roles as medicine people, healers, prophets, shamans, and sorcerers. We look forward to an endless and fathomless process as coming out — as Gay people, as animals, as humans, as mysterious and powerful spirits that move through the life cycle of the cosmos. (154-5).”

“Police say Yogendra Pathak, 44 was “putting it out there that he had the ability to practice magic and by doing that he could solve people’s problems… for money.” … Police say they believe Mr. Pathak was operating for over a year and do not yet know how many people have been conned by his alleged scam. They are urging victims and anyone with information to come forward. Mr. Pathak is charged with fraud under $5,000 and pretending to practice witchcraft.”

“The key word in the legislation is the word “pretending” (in subsections (a) and (c).) As pointed out to me by my friend in London via private correspondence: the word “pretending” here suggests that the State does not believe that witchcraft could be real: anyone who says they are practicing witchcraft is only pretending. That can potentially include those who say that they are practicing the religion. With this in mind, it’s not difficult to imagine a religiously conservative or puritan judge ruling that anyone who practices the religion of Wicca is “pretending” to practice witchcraft.

Our religious practices are already protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is part of our constitution and thus trumps the Criminal Code. But a lot will depend on the eye of the beholder here. It is not difficult to imagine a future government much more conservative than our present one, declaring that witchcraft and wicca is not a religion, and that anyone who practices it is “pretending”. Remember, it doesn’t matter if you think it’s a religion: it matters if the law thinks so. I do not know if any judicial precedents have established wicca and witchcraft as a religion in the eyes of the law. So I’ve written to a lawyer that I know, and I await his response.”

While not all Pagans think the law should be repealed, there is a grass-roots movement building to work for the law’s repeal. It should be stressed that all the accused perpetrators were caught and charged with existing laws against fraud, so why has this little-used witchcraft charge been dug up again? What real purpose does it serve other than to sensationalize, muddy the waters of religious freedom, and create potential problems for ethical practitioners of magic and witchcraft who happen to charge for various services? How long before an otherwise ethical magic-worker gets charged due to a vindictive former client? It doesn’t seem so far-fetched a scenario considering the recent frequency this law is getting invoked.

“I have studied and practiced many therapeutic methods, as well as many different spiritual practices, such as; The Eastern Philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism, Sidha yoga with Brahma khumaris and other yoga practices for self realization. Western philosophies of Christianity, Science of mind, Course in miracles, Catholicism, Native American Spiritualities, Judaism, Muslim, Sufi, Ancient Alchemy of the Emerald Tablet, Metaphysics, Wicca, Pagan and many other world spiritualities.”

“Will the Christianist base support a candidate whose sister has studied Wicca and pagan spiritualities and supports marriage equality for gays and lesbians? Apparently, Jennie believes that much that has been written about her sister is untrue.”

“Which groups of Australians most worry other Australians? Muslims, gays and – astonishingly – witches. That apparently anachronistic result appears in a survey of public submissions to a national inquiry into freedom of religion and belief in the 21st century, from which the draft report was submitted last week to the Australian Human Rights Commission … These views do not reflect mainstream opinion; it takes a certain passion and effort to make a detailed submission, so only those most involved or committed will do so. But they provide a fascinating window into contemporary concerns about religion.”

“But in more than 30 years of existence, the Radical Faeries have evolved — albeit gradually and with difficulty — towards embracing a more sexually diverse membership. Some Radical Faerie groups accept people of all genders and orientations with the idea that anyone who identifies as a faerie is one. However, many older members still require gatherings to be male-only and the issue of inclusion continues to be controversial. “As an oppressed people, gay men [have] had to overcome their own prejudices against women, bi, trans [and] intersex people,” notes Singleton, who at 28, is part of the younger generation of faeries.”

What role will the Radical Faeries play within the Pagan community as it becomes more open and inclusive? Will what was once a gay-male only tradition soon become something far larger and influential?

“The lawsuit seeks to block state and federal law enforcement from arresting or bringing criminal charges against church members who “fear reprisal from both state and federal governments for openly practicing their religion,” court papers state. … The lawsuit was filed in Utah because since 1999, church members here say they have been harassed, arrested and prosecuted for using peyote, court papers say.”

This has been an ongoing issue in Utah, and one that will no doubt bring the issue of religious entheogens to the mainstream media once more. We’ll be paying attention to this case as it develops.

“Harry Hay, who “inspired” Obama-appointed Education Department official Kevin Jennings to lead a life of homosexual activism, was not only a supporter of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) but a prominent member of the Communist Party USA and “Radical Faerie” who believed in the power of the occult. Hay’s influence is relevant not only because Jennings is a top Education Department official, but because Hay is considered by homosexuals to be the founder of their movement. A Stalinist and Marxist until the day he died, Hay defended NAMBLA’s participation in “gay rights” marches and its membership in the International Lesbian and Gay Association.”

“In fact, Jennings’ praise of Hay has only “led to questions” among those determined to mischaracterize that praise. Jennings praised Hay’s role in helping start “the first ongoing gay rights groups in America” in 1948, which has nothing to do with NAMBLA. (Just as unacceptable to Kincaid, it appears, is that Hay was also “a prominent member of the Communist Party USA and ‘Radical Faerie’ who believed in the power of the occult.”)”

“Needless to say, the Radical Faeries have had a huge impact on Gay Pagan spirituality, and the movement has done much to help integrate Gay voices into the wider Pagan community since the early 1980s*. Burnside, along with Hay and other pioneers in the Gay spirituality movement, have left an indelible mark on Gay and Pagan culture.”

Does this mean I also support NAMBLA or pedophilia? Of course not. The notion is absurd, but that’s the kind of logic that is being thrown around here. Kevin Jennings is not into “the occult” because he praised a RadFae co-founder, any more than I’m transphobic for acknowledging the work Mary Daly has done in furthering feminist theology. Has our political discourse become so tainted and mean-spirited that anyone we praise or acknowledge must be blemish-free lest we risk being associated with any controversial word or deed they have committed? If so, I know a lot of Pagans that are in trouble, because I’m not the only one who has praised the work of Harry Hay.

After meeting in the mid-sixties, Burnside and Hay blazed a trail for the still nascent Gay rights movement. They were protesting the exclusion of Gays from the military back in 1966, and appeared on television together two years before the Stonewall riots. Unlike some Gay rights advocates, Burnside was not an assimilationist, preferring that Gays develop their own unique culture and spirituality. This impulse lead to the creation of the Radical Faerie movement in 1979.

“In 1979 John and Harry joined with fellow activists Don Kilhefner and Mitch Walker to call the first Spiritual Gathering of Radical Faeries. Fed up with the Gay movement’s steady drift towards mainstream assimilation, the gathering called to Gay men across the country. Since that time dozens of Faerie gatherings have been called around the world and permanent Radical Faerie sanctuaries have formed across the country. The movement helped to nurture and create a specifically Gay centered spiritual exploration and tradition.”

In Burnside’s 1989 essay “Who Are the Gay People?”, he illuminated the idea of a “Gay consciousness”, and described Gays as people who make a “continual reference to inner vision and insight”.

“Refusing to be products of the man/woman-making machine, Gay people must undertake to create themselves. Having no models to imitate, Gay people are free to adopt what they like from among the many ways there are to be. They search everywhere for promising leads, and, like spiritual magpies they take what they like from any system of religion or philosophy without feeling obliged to take the whole of it. Gay people continue to work on themselves all their lives, moving from stage to stage, growing in spirit, living in change, and rejoicing in being themselves.”

Needless to say, the Radical Faeries have had a huge impact on Gay Pagan spirituality, and the movement has done much to help integrate Gay voices into the wider Pagan community since the early 1980s*. Burnside, along with Hay and other pioneers in the Gay spirituality movement, have left an indelible mark on Gay and Pagan culture. His voice and unique spirit will be missed. May he be reunited with his loved ones in the Otherworld.